Today’s word is DRIED. We often refer to the embodied connection between people and God. Such metaphors place us in our earthly, messy, physical world. They plant us inside our own mortal, fleshy, vulnerable bodies.

When something is dried out, it is withering and dying due to lack of moisture. Or it has been deliberately preserved by removing fluids.

How do people dry out? What depletes us? Sometimes it’s real; we are thirsty. In literary terms, often it’s about lack of energy: mental, emotional, or physical.

In this case, the Psalmist equates green, fertile soil and waters with life, and dry, parched places as sites of wasting, weakness, suffering, and death. Famine and drought was often a theme in the agrarian societies of the Bible, and the risk of starvation and suffering and death was real. Wandering in the desert, the deadly wilderness where Israelites were lost for 40 years, was also part of one of their greatest narratives: Exodus. Restoration of strength and vitality comes when we have access to Godself and the benefits that come from God.

And yet, at other times in these texts, dry ground is the path to safety. For instance, in Joshua, it was the crossing point through waters that otherwise overwhelm, such as the Jordan or the Red Sea. Life came with release from bondage, and trust in God’s goodness and power, through a covenant relationship.

Ultimately, Gospels and the writings of Paul compare Christ to a wellspring of water. Our Messiah’s love and grace serves as a font of life, too. Baptism, one of our sacraments, includes water. The sacrament of communion includes juice or wine, the liquid drawn from the pulp and flesh of the fruit of the vine, representing also the life and blood of Christ. We have a long history of encounters with water and wine among people of faith.

When you have felt withered and dried up, whether emotionally, psychologically, or physically. What revived and restored you? In what way do you need to be connected to yourself, to others, to creation, or to your God? Often disconnection is the source of the drying-up.

During Lent, we encourage disciplines of self-care, reflection and spiritual practices. These can be ways of seeking renewal.

As you renew yourself, you are also capable of caring for others. Caring for others, thinking and doing for others, is another focus of our spiritual Lenten practices. We can become wellsprings of resilience and hope for others, too. We can refresh other people, and parts of the world, with our choices, words, and acts.

Psalm 32: 4 — For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

Joshua 4: 14-24 — For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you crossed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea,which he dried up for us until we crossed over.

2 Corinthians 5: 14-15 — 14 For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. 15 And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.